Monument

First world problems are problems

So how can you tell me you're lonely,And say for you that the sun don't shine?Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of LondonI'll show you something to make you change your mind.

Read that again carefully. You may think you're sad, but there are people living on the streets of London who are worse off than you are, so you're actually mistaken about being sad.

Firstly: trying to police another person's feelings is a fool's game. Everyone who's suffered from depression has had some patronising bastard come up to them and tell them that everything would be all right if they just got a sense of perspective. Don't be that person. The last thing we need is Ralph McTell singing about it to warmed-over Pachelbel.

Secondly: suppose the song's argument was valid: you can't be sad, because there are people on the streets who have it worse than you do. Well, is there a human situation worse than living on the streets of London? Maybe being tortured in Libya is worse? Well then, we should be able to go round all the homeless people in London telling them all that they're not allowed to be unhappy because they're not being tortured in Libya. Eventually you find the person who's having a worse time than everyone else in the world, and you tell them that they're allowed to be sad, and nobody else is. This isn't the Depression Olympics.

I agree completely. To the extent there's an argument in belittling something as a "first world* problem," that argument is "food insecurity makes you unhappy, so food security makes you happy." Uh, ok. I think that's one of the first fallacies we learn to deal with after we learn how to form the contrapositive, but thanks.

* - and how I hate the fact that this Cold War term is what we use to describe people who are technologically and economically well off.